Water quality and sediment transport issues in surface water

Proc. IAHS, 377, 1–1, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/piahs-377-1-2018 Open Access
© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Preface: Water quality and sediment

transport issues in surface water
Gil Mahe1 , Kate Heal2 , Akhilendra B. Gupta3 , and Hafzullah Aksoy4
1 IRD, HydroSciences Laboratory, Montpellier University, Montpellier, France
2 The University of Edinburgh, School of GeoSciences, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
3 Department of Civil Engineering, MNIT, Jaipur, India
4 Istanbul Technical University, Civil Engineering Faculty, Istanbul, Turkey

Correspondence: Gil Mahe (gil.mahe@ird.fr)

Published: 16 April 2018

Sediment transport and water quality are modified by hu- This proceeding volume gathers together communications
man activities all along river courses. If research focuses only about water quality and sediment transport monitoring and
on pristine basins and large dams, little is known about the modeling, especially for large river basins, with a focus on
quality of the waters flowing to the sea. Most rivers around the relationships between estuarine river systems and coastal
the world regulated to some extent by hydraulic infrastruc- areas in terms of water quality and sediment load. There are
ture, even in developing countries. How river management also studies presenting diverse methods for estimating the
impacts on water quality and sediment transport from the up- amount of sediment released to the sea and its variability
per basins to coastal areas is not well known in many coun- in time. All these papers were presented as oral or poster
tries, especially in the developing world, even though this communications during the IAHS International Conference
may have strong and longlasting effects on coastal geomor- of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, July 2017.
phology and ecosystems. In a time where many people try to
explain the coastal recession that is observed on many coast-
lines, from the sea level rise and thus from “global change”,
knowledge of the actual sediment transport to the sea could
bring new perspectives, as the reduction of riverine sediment
transfer certainly contributes to this recession. One of the as-
sociated questions is what is the role of the human impact on
these processes? At what speed do these changes take place?

Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences.